The United Ways Community Assessment Project shows a 44% drop in homelessness in Santa Cruz County.

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Some Santa Cruz City Leaders are proposing doing more for the homeless, by providing those living in RVs 'Safe Zones' in which to park their vehicles.

While there have been strides in providing housing for the homeless, there are many people who turn to their vehicles for everyday shelter.

Mayor Don Lane and others are trying to help by creating areas where they can park without receiving a citation.

Creating so called, 'Safe Zones' could resolve taxpayer complaints about trash, noise, and neighborhoods that look like RV parks and accommodate those folks who are cited for overnight parking or sleeping in their RVs.

"So there's no concentrated place where you just have a couple of people perhaps in some public parking lots, also in church parking lots and business parking lots. It can be dispersed widely so there isn't a concentration of the burden," Santa Cruz Mayor Don Lane said.

While the Santa Cruz Homeless Services Center is not involved in housing the homeless in RVs, they support anything that reduces the criminality of homelessness, like repeatedly being cited for sleeping in a vehicle.

"It doesn't help homelessness and in fact, it sort of supports homelessness, in the fact people get caught up in the criminal system. They get fined. They can't pay for their fines. They're homeless," Santa Cruz Homeless Services Center Board President, Claudia Brown said.

However, a community organization, Take Back Santa Cruz says they are against any locations or ideas of people living in their vehicles. It's not solving homelessness it's only perpetuating it.

"Rather than the city of Santa Cruz trying to take the lead and trying to do, little band-aid operations on different aspects of homelessness, we need to come up with a full approach to homelessness that's what we need as a county," Co-founder, Analicia Cube said.

Another point of interest: 35 cities in the state have overnight RV restrictions--currently Santa Cruz does not have any.

Santa Cruz is looking down the coast to Santa Barbara with a successful parking program where homeless are allowed to get permits to live in designated lots over night. Santa Cruz will have a goal to get them out of their RVs and into transitional housing.